This invention relates to accountability systems for vendors and more particularly to systems for automatically providing sales and cash accountability for vendors.
A continuing concern of operators, e.g., owners, of vending machines (vendors) is losses resulting from skimming or theft of cash and items from vending machines. Manual accountability systems have been used to reduce the skimming and theft but these have not proved to be overly successful. Such manual systems involve mahually taken machine inventories and the use of refund slips and test vend slips which the route person is supposed to insert in the cash box whenever a refund or a test vend is made so that the amount of money which should be present in the cash box can be calculated. Unfortunately, the data collected using such systems is inaccurate, in part because refund and test vend slips are not always completed by the route person. Moreover, such systems are highly labor intensive and highly dependent upon the conscientiousness of the individual route person. As a result, there are wide variations in accuracy when such systems are used and generally this lack of accuracy prevents the detection of most skimming. Operators are not only concerned with detecting shortages in cash and merchandise, they are also interested in determining who was responsible for the shortages and in learning of such shortages as soon as possible after they occur. Neither of these goals are readily achievable with manual accountability systems.
Test vends are a troublesome product and cash accountability area. Some vending equipment, usually drink machines, have a test vend switch which allows the attendant to operate the machine's dispensing system without money. So long as these test vends are not counted as machine sales, such operation does not affect the machine cash accountability, but it does affect product accountability. Test vend slips are necessary for product accountability purposes. Test vend slips must also be prepared when these test vends are included in the total of machine sales because a record of such test vends is then necessary to determine how much money should be turned in from that particular machine.
Test vends also create cash and product accountability problems on machines not equipped with test vend switches or when it is desired to test the coin handling unit of a machine. Commonly money is taken from the vendor's cash box or change tubes and reinserted into the machine for test vends. Since this will be recorded as a sale by a machine with a sales meter, the service person is required to fill out test vend slips in order to accurately determine the amount of money which should be turned in from that machine. Unfortunately test vend slips are often incorrect and sometimes not collected.
Instead of allowing their employees to use change tube or cash box money for test vends, some operators loan their employees money which they can carry with them to make test vends and to replenish change tubes. The employee must turn in a record of his test vends, and is in turn reimbursed for them. This system eliminates the need to use machine money for test vends, but in order to have cash accountability for individual machines the test vend records must be broken down by machine serviced. This system, if done properly, requires considerable bookkeeping.
Another problem with test vends is that the test vend might be reported but never actually performed and the money pocketed by the route person. A large amount of skimming can be done in this manner with current systems without detection.
Many operators permit their employees to have free drinks or packaged products from the machines they service or tend. On a drink machine employees use the test vend button provided on earlier machines to obtain free drinks and the vended item is recorded as a test vend. In the case of packaged products, i.e. non-drink items, the items are merely removed from the machine by the employee and consumed. Of course, records of these transactions are needed for product accountability purposes, but they may not be accurately kept or turned in, and even if they are the process increases the amount of internal bookkeeping required.
A related cash and product accountability problem occurs when customers take packaged product from the route person's trays before or while the product is loaded into the machine. Using present systems, the route person usually puts the money received from the customer in the cash box. As a result the vend price of the item is not counted as a sale in conventional systems and the cash box money does not check out. Of course, instead of putting the money in the cash box, the route person can merely pocket it or otherwise prevent shortages from being detected.
Product in a food machine sometimes spoils before it is sold and must be removed. For adequate product accountability, a record must be kept of these removed products, called pulls. Manual record keeping of this sort, even if attempted, would also suffer from the inaccuracies mentioned above in connection with test vend slips.
At least two semi-automated accountability systems have been devised to address some of the concerns of the vendor operators, but these systems could be improved. For example, although both of these systems provide for automatic recording of total sales figures and for retrieval of these figures using a data interrogator or probe, neither can adequately determine the amount of money which should be collected from the vending machines because, in part, they require manual recording of refunds and collection of refund slips and they do not provide true accountability of money in the change tubes. These systems also lack means for automatically recording test vends and for recording information useful in identifying the person or persons responsible for any shortages.